(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a provision of broadcast contents, and more particularly, to a handover method between a broadcasting network and a communication network for providing broadcast contents.
(b) Description of the Related Art
With the development of an IT technology, a terminal including both a communication network receiver and a broadcasting network receiver has been propagated. The broadcast contents may be provided through the communication network or the broadcasting network.
A user terminal may receive the broadcast contents (for example, baseball game) through the broadcasting network. When the corresponding broadcast contents forcibly end according to regular broadcasting scheduling, the user may want to continuously view the corresponding broadcast contents. In this case, a handover procedure between the broadcasting network and the communication network is required.
A general handover procedure between the broadcasting network and the communication network starts by a request of a terminal. That is, the terminal continuously measures wireless signals therearound and reports the measured results to a network that is presently accessed by the terminal. The network to which the measured results are reported from the terminal determines a handover operation according to a predetermined reference and the terminal request resource reservation to a network (that is, a target network) to which the handover is made. Therefore, the terminal may continuously receive the corresponding broadcast contents through the handover operation and the resumption of a broadcasting service between the communication network and the broadcasting network.
However, the general handover operation between the communication network and the broadcasting network is limited to a specific terminal requesting the corresponding handover. Therefore, when a group handover targeting a plurality of terminals due to a change in a state of the network is required, it is difficult to perform an appropriate handover operation.